OnePlus 2 First Impression: Is This Phone 2016 Flagship Killer?

The long awaited phone by the geeks, or say for those who were looking for a best choice to upgrade their phone is out. OnePlus 2 is claimed to be a flagship killer phone for 2016, is what OnePlus claims it to be. Indeed this phone comes with some flagship features and high-end specifications at a mid-ranged price. It is also equipped with bigger battery, fingerprint sensor and many other improvements on the OS part. Like OnePlus One, this phone has been released with 2 storage variants i.e. 64GB and 16GB. But as of now, only 64GB model shall be available on sale starting 11th of August exclusively on Amazon.in. For getting an invite of OnePlus 2, users might have to monitor social media accounts of company where they’ll be releasing the codes soon.

OnePlus 2 First Impression: Is This Phone 2016 Flagship Killer?

Design

Like its predecessor, OnePlus 2 also features a compact, yet robust build quality, but it offers some improvement by comparison. Firstly, it features a metal rim on the sides for making it more rugged and secondly the device feels more compact in hand. The OnePlus 2 also added a few necessary improvements for standing out from the crowd.

The first striking aspect of the OnePlus 2 is that it looks and feels like a well-made phone that utilizes quality materials. It still feels like a OnePlus – the back sports the same rough textured plastic, which feels more like stone than the slick plastic of other phones. It means the OnePlus 2 is extremely grippy.

The phone’s fingerprint scanner is placed slightly below the display and the shape is similar to the Home button we’ve seen on the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9+ but it’s slightly indented; it’s actually not a push button though it can sense touch and even wake the phone from sleep when it comes across a fingerprint it recognises. You can also choose to activate two capacitive touch buttons that are placed on the two sides of the fingerprint sensor and deactivate the on-screen buttons. In that case, the fingerprint sensor also doubles up as the Home button.

The back of the phone is slightly rounded and just like its predecessor, the 64GB variant comes with a back panel that sports a sandstone finish. However, the big change is that the back cover is removable. You’ll see some OnePlus branding and a metal strip that houses the dual-LED flash, 13MP camera lens and a laser-focus system (in that order). Yes, unlike most phones, the flash is placed above the camera lens. The metal strip is not flush with the phone’s back and slightly protrudes out.

Display

The OnePlus come with a 5.5-inch, 1,080×1,920 pixels, 401PPI display overlaid with the latest Corning Gorilla Glass 4 for added protection. The display looks nice with crisp texts and colourful icons when used. It also comes with adaptive brightness feature which optimises the brightness level for available light. It also offers decent viewing angles too.

Camera

The stand-out feature though is Oneplus 2’s camera. The back-facing camera has a 13-megapixel sensor with optical image stabilisation, ie better low light photos and less blurred images. That back camera includes a two-tone flash and a laser focusing system. The results are surprising to say the least.

In terms of megapixels, 13 is on par with last year’s offering. That’s also fewer pixels than either Samsung’s Galaxy S6 or the LG G4, both of which pack 16-megapixel sensors. But while the megapixel count hasn’t changed, the size of the individual pixels has. The bigger pixels capture more light per pixel than smaller ones and this, in turn, reduces the amount of digital noise or “grain” in photos, especially in low-light situations.

Specifications

In terms of hardware, the OnePlus 2 is pretty well endowed with 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with 1.8GHz Octa-core CPUs, Adreno 430 GPU and 4GB DDR4 RAM. The phone comes with 64GB storage but there’s no microSD card slot. In terms of connectivity, it supports dual-band Wi-Fi: 2.4GHz b/g/n and 5GHz a/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1 and 4G LTE (with support for both 4G bands).

The OnePlus 2 comes pre-installed with home-baked operating system OxygenOS 2.0. Based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, the operating system retains the cosmetic interface and notification and adds necessary gestures and controls like double tap to wake, draw an ‘O’ to open camera, draw ‘V’ to toggle flashlight and draw > or < to change music track.

The phone does not come with an FM radio tuner or NFC connectivity. While the fingerprint sensor supports different authentication options, the lack of NFC may prevent the phone from being used for mobile payments at physical terminals.

Storage and Battery

OnePlus 2 comes with a non-removable 3,300mAh battery which is good enough for a 5.5-inch FHD based device, but the device lacks fast charging capability. We found out of 64GB built-in storage the device leaves around 59GB for user consumption.

Final Verdict

While OnePlus 2 is pretty exciting phone with it’s great build quality, superb looks, like OnePlus one, amazing back covers and grip in hand is nice. Also, the device is priced on a decent price-to-specification ratio with latest android OS, and OnePlus has managed to get millions of reservations in just few days. At this price (Rs 24,999), it’s hard to find a rival to the OnePlus 2 but some other good options are Asus Zenfone 2 and Huawei Honor 6 Plus. We’ll have a detailed review of the phone soon.

An optimist to the core, I always see the glass half full. I like to take life as it comes and not to become too serious on the harsher aspects of it. Apart from this, I am an Engineer, a Blogger & a Researcher. Join me on Facebook and Google + and Twitter. Also you can add me on Whatsapp at +91-8285555592.

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